After a few irreversible spills, most of us get tired of cleaning up the mess. So we learn to self-censor.

Not so Ezra Levant. Self-censorship and the fear of reprisal is the topic of discussion in his book, “Shakedown: How our government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights” (McLelland and Stewart, Toronto, 2009). In this sobering read, Levant cites examples of HRC cases, their unfair methods and rulings, from various commissions all across Canada. He also details his own hearings with the Alberta Human Rights Commission regarding his publication of infamous Dutch cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed in Levant’s now-defunct publication, The Western Standard.

Levant says that “Human rights commissions were a beautiful idea—that failed.”

Sure, we all want to live free of discrimination, but Levant says HRC’s are anti-democratic, because they try to enforce how people should feel, think and speak. What’s worse, Section 13 of the Act (referring to hate messages communicated via the telephone, computer networks, the Internet, and by extension, the media as well) turns HRC’s into, in his words, “the thought police.”

He says, “That’s the thing about Section 13. It’s focused 100 per cent on words, not on criminal deeds. Everyone charged under Section 13 is trying to spark a debate of one kind or another.”

The rulings he cites illustrate his opinion with brutal clarity. A Christian pastor in Alberta, for example, was raked over the coals regarding a letter to the editor in the Red Deer Advocate criticizing homosexuality. He was finally ordered to recant this religious viewpoint and never to preach about it again. Maclean’s magazine was targeted for publishing an excerpt from columnist Mark Steyn’s book, “America Alone: The End of the World as we know it”; and Levant himself, for “insulting” a guest during a debate on a radio show about his decision to publish the Mohammed cartoons.

While reading this book, I related Levant’s thesis to the biggest responsibility in my life right now: parenting. I wish I could control not only my children’s words and behavior, but also their feelings. It’s impossible. I may be able to force an apology out of one of my kids for something they did to another (on pain of punishment) but I can’t make them mean it.

Many examples cited in the book remind me of childish arguments that belong on the school ground. We used to settle a conflict ourselves, sometimes with a good scrap after school, and then it was over. Today, we want the government to settle our conflicts for us, to scold and embarrass people publicly just like mom and dad did when big brother cut off our hair in the middle of the night. But the problem with the state telling us how to live and think and speak is…well, the state’s gonna tell us how to live and think and speak.

Is it my unalienable right as a Canadian to punish those who offend me? If so, where do we draw the line between meaningful offenses and foolishness? Can over-arching rights like freedom of expression or freedom of religion be protected when individual rights are emphasized to such an extreme?

To use a biblical analogy (you don’t mind, do you?) perhaps we have traded our birthright for a bowl of stew.

Levant made me wonder if there was ever a time when HRC’s served a need not already addressed by the criminal code. He said, “they’ve [HRC’s] gone from being an informal ‘people’s court’ for disadvantaged minorities who are truly at risk to being a parallel legal system run by left-wing social engineers.”

I think it’s important to resist the American tendency to label and reject people’s opinion based solely on their known politics. More and more, popular opinion and media seem to flow into left and right camps, and I fear such herding keeps society from studying all ideas objectively and without stereotype.  Citizens of every political stripe in every region should give this book some serious thought. If we are willing to let the bureaucrats dictate policy to us, we will get the country we deserve.

All the revelations in Kelley’s book were Winfrey’s to dish out in 1993 when she suddenly withdrew plans to publish her autobiography with Knopf. She got cold feet, worrying that telling her unflattering secrets would hurt her.

This year, Kelley aired her dirty laundry, anyway. Defending her book, Kelley said, “I don’t want to live in a world where all we get is authorized information.”

I find it ironic that a person who has broadcast hundreds of sensational topics from sexuality to skinheads should be the subject of such a sensational book. Let’s face it, Winfrey’s life is sensational.

At 445 pages, plus an extensive bibliography, you have to be dedicated to the subject matter to finish this book. No one could fault Kelley for leaving anything out. She poured over tax returns from Winfrey’s various charitable foundations and conducted some 850 personal interviews, most on the record, with family members, former media colleagues, employees (some disgruntled) and show guests who were not afraid to talk or were bound by Winfrey’s infamous non-disclosure agreement.

Because Winfrey declined to be interviewed, Kelley also researched and categorized more than 2700 interviews given by Winfrey to media outlets in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada over the course of her storied career. She no longer gives interviews, and I don’t blame Winfrey for declining an interview with Kelley. Nobody in their right mind would want such personal inconsistencies, frailties and downright neurosis to ruin a carefully-constructed image. Everybody has secrets, but nobody cares about mine or yours, because we’re not worth $2.7 billion.

Kelley paints Winfrey as a woman whose primary drive in life has never been altruism, but billionaire status. She believes altruism is merely a by-product of her God-ordained success. She is a mix of contradictions: lavish beyond measure to her loyal friends and employees, but vicious to those she perceives as a threat to her brand; warm, sensitive and approachable on television, but demanding, selfish and unfriendly when the cameras are turned off; She carefully constructs a “truthful” message about “Living Your Best Life,” but is somehow unable to control her binge eating and other compulsive behavior.

Kelley gives an in-depth look at the history and business of television talk shows while she reveals Oprah’s not so flattering characteristics: she was probably not quite so poverty stricken as she maintains; she exaggerates or downright lies about several aspects of her past to sweeten her life story for her followers. She says Winfrey displays a personal inconsistency with her public brand: she’s been plagued by the legacy of sexual abuse, including teenage prostitution and promiscuity, an unwanted pregnancy, drug abuse and uncontrollable food addiction, and questions about her sexuality. She is remarkably generous with her deadbeat family even as she rejects them emotionally. They deny her abuse claims and make her feel like an “ATM machine.”

Winfrey is arguably the most powerful and influential woman in the world. Her television show is seen in 145 countries worldwide, she has single-handedly revived book publishing in the United States, and made publishers and authors alike very rich. She’s given well over $250 million to charity and has tremendous political clout. It’s no wonder publishers were afraid to publish Kelley’s biography.

So reading it seemed like a guilty pleasure. Somehow, after watching Winfrey on TV all these years, I felt I was betraying her trust by reading gossip. Such is the power of her public persona.

I shook it off and read it anyway, because books like these serve to remind us that celebrities are not god-like, after all, and should not be worshipped. The rich and powerful are occasionally just as insecure, petty, controlling (and sometimes, out-of-control) as the rest of us. Knowing this does not diminish Winfrey’s accomplishments, it only highlights the intense drive required to succeed in spite of tremendous obstacles.

What you don’t see in this idyllic picture is my elbow pitted sharply against one of my kids in an attempt to keep them from yelling at the one beside him. You don’t see the moments between takes, when my seven-year-old shuffles and jockeys for space, and the two elder grouch and grumble about his selfishness.

I’m sure this is a familiar scene to some of you. Parents: don’t we wish we could control not only our children’s words and behavior, but also their feelings? Too bad it’s impossible. You may be able to force an apology out of your kids on pain of punishment, but you can’t make them mean it.

In a home, an enforced peace keeps life quiet. But on a societal level, trying to control people’s opinions and thoughts is not a sign of democracy, but of fascism.

I think this is what Human Rights Commissions try to achieve in Canada…they want to control how people think to encourage peace. Not only is it impossible, it’s dangerous.

Human Rights Commissions across Canada are empowered by the Canadian Human Rights Act, which was first established in 1977. The purpose of the Act, so stated, is to “the principle that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society, without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origins, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted.”

What wonderful intentions for our great country. Canada should be a place where all can make an enviable life for themselves, without fear of discrimination.

However, every democracy is only as healthy as the citizens who live within it, and frankly, judging by some of the rulings that have come out of these Human Rights Commissions in the last few years, some of you are getting pretty whiny.

The problem with at least a couple of recent decisions by tribunals across the country is that persons accused seem to be guilty until proven innocent—and when the defendant is found guilty, they’re left with a pile of bills, while the applicant’s complaint is paid by the taxpayer.

Here are a couple of recent examples.

On June 18, 2009, The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal ruled that Police Constable Michael Shaw did discriminate against Ronald Phipps, temporary mail carrier, when he stopped and questioned him on March 9, 2005. There are some disputed facts in the case between the applicant and the constable, but the basic story goes that Phipps, on his second day as a temporary mail carrier in a wealthy Toronto neighborhood, caught Shaw’s eye while on patrol. Shaw was assigned to the area where Phipps was delivering mail because of reports of phone lines being cut by suspects described as male, white and East European. Phipps is Afro-Canadian. Constable Shaw asserts that he realized that this was not the usual letter carrier. Shaw noticed Phipps was not stopping to deliver mail at every house and had crisscrossed back to houses he had previously visited.

Because of this, Shaw, along with a partner, stopped Phipps to question him and ask for identification. When a background check proved clear, he was sent on his way. Shaw questioned another regular mail carrier in the area, who assured him that Phipps was indeed a temp.

Subsequently, Phipps made a complaint to the Human Rights Commission, believing the police officers’ decision to stop and question him was because of his skin colour and he testified that he was upset, dazed and in shock.

Four years later, Kaye Joachim, the adjudicator with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, agreed. The panel found Shaw and the Toronto Police Commission guilty and stated in the ruling dated June 18, 2009 that “There is no need to establish an intention or motivation to discriminate; the focus of the enquiry is on the effect of the respondent’s actions on the complainant.”

Contrast this decision with July’s kerfuffle in the U.S. regarding Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates Junior, who was arrested in Cambridge Massachusetts, while breaking into his own house. Mr. Gates had misplaced his keys upon returning from a trip to China. President Obama, who is a personal friend of the professor, weighed in on the state of race relations in America at a press conference, saying “The Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.” Later, Obama had to do some damage control when the police officer maintained publicly that he was just doing his job.

In this case, Phipps was not manhandled or arrested. He was not shown undue force like the well-known case of Robert Dziekanski, who was killed by several tazer shots at the hands of police in a BC airport in 2007. Shaw questioned (perhaps embarrassed is a better word) Phipps in an area where surveillance was taking place. Was Shaw guilty of being hyper-sensitive to anyone unfamiliar or remotely suspicious? Maybe. Were Shaw’s actions the result of subconscious racism? According to the Tribunal, it doesn’t matter, because the applicant thinks the policeman was motivated by racism, and the effect of that belief is enough.

Sets a powerful precedent, don’t you think?

Columnist Lorne Gunter commented on this ruling in the National Post, Friday, July 31, 2009. He said, “Rights Commissions were set up to be simple forums for settling discrimination complaints. They were never intended to be taxpayer-funded cudgels with which activists and grievers may beat their enemies without the expenses of a court case, and without the need to follow the rules of due process.” He believes the tribunals should be disbanded because they are biased.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission has lofty goals, including being, “respectful of the dignity of each person and their right to be free from discrimination and to be kept fully informed.” But they talk about their ‘excellent customer service,’ as though they were a gas station where people can go pick up their rights on a store shelf!  Strange language, but we’re used to hearing it in this societal atmosphere of hyper-individualism. If I’m not completely satisfied, can I return my experience for a full refund?

Another example drives the point home further.

In May, 2008, The Human Rights Panel of Alberta ruled against Rev. Stephen Boissoin and the Concerned Christian Coalition, Inc. in favour of the applicant, Darren E. Lund, a local citizen. The panel believed that Boissoin’s strongly-worded letter to the editor in the Red Deer Advocate was “likely to expose homosexuals to hatred or contempt because of their sexual orientation.”

Boissoin’s letter protested homosexual activism on religious grounds and was particularly concerned about organized homosexual advocacy or support systems in public schools.

No specific person was mentioned in the letter, and there was no incitement to physical violence. Lund complained, however, and the ruling was quite extreme, indeed.

Panel Chair Lori Andreachuk ordered Rev. Boisson to cease publishing his views on this subject ‘in newspapers, by e-mail, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet.’ He was ordered to pay compensation of $5000 to Darren Lund, (who was not named in the letter) and further to make a public recantation of beliefs he still holds. Additional damages of up to $2000 were awarded to another witness, and the ruling demanded a written apology to be printed in the Red Deer Advocate. This ruling is under appeal.

A public recantation of beliefs? The state is telling a citizen that he’s not even allowed to hold the religious belief that homosexuality is a sin? Come on. How many times have you read something in a letter to the editor by a hot-head that made you a little crazy? So what? Do you really want to throw away the overarching rights of freedom of expression and freedom of religion (that protect all of us) just so that an example can be made of one guy?

If being offended or insulted can rightly be called, ‘discrimination,’ then I have several people (including a couple of close relatives) about whom I could submit a complaint! Maybe I could make a few bucks.

Incidentally, as I write this, my two youngest children are having an argument, and the elder just stormed to her room and slammed the door. I could try to get them to apologize, but could I make them mean it? Maybe I should just let them work it out.

Case in point: on March 31, the efforts of Port Hardy Secondary School Principal Steve Gray to curb cell phone use by students at his school on Vancouver Island was splashed all over the news.

Gray got sick of kids ignoring the school cell phone ban and purchased a jamming device from China. When it arrived, he set it up in the school library, plugged it in, and bang! Two-thirds of the school was blocked from cell phone usage.

Result: Yay! Happy teachers, confused students.

Until they figured out what was going on, that is.

According to news reports, some of the students were okay with the jamming device, but others didn’t like the principal obstructing their important messages.

They’re teenagers, you know…got plenty of emergency situations to sort out, like:

“What’d you get on your math quiz, man?”

“Ah, that teacher bites…she hates me.”

“Should we go see ‘Gory Movie 6’ Friday night? Terry said she couldn’t sleep for 3 days after!”

“Did you see what Nickey was wearing today? I can’t believe Billy likes her instead of me.”

“Gloria said that Peter said that Jill said that Fred said that Steve was looking at me in the theatre today. Do you think he likes me?”

So after lunch last Thursday, a group of students desperate to re-engage in their life or death communication refused to return to class, claiming their rights had been taken away. They told the principal that jamming devices were illegal in Canada, and Gray should pull the plug.

Which he did.

Result: vindicated students, unhappy teachers.

So the teachers went back to repeating the mantra, “Turn off the cell phone, please. Put your cell phone away, please. Give me the cell phone, please. Hands on your desk, please. Eyes looking forward, please.”

But what are they really thinking? “For ***##@ sakes, bring the cell phone over here and I’ll text a message for you, you whiny, spoiled brat. Whoops, I accidentally dropped it on the floor! Oh, no! What have I done? It’s just been crushed into a fine powder under my orthopedic shoe! How did that happen?”

(Well, that’s what curmudgeonly teachers would be thinking. )

So what do lawyers and the politically-correct, just-wanna-be-the-kids’-friend type of school officials say? They’d say the jamming device is not only illegal, but it, “violates the students’ right to contact parents to and from school.”

Baw! That’s ridiculous. When I was a kid, if you needed to get in touch with your parents, you used a public phone or you went to the school office. Furthermore, up until about ten years ago, if workers were out of the office, they were out of the office. You left a message, and they got back to you.

I’m amazed there aren’t more pedestrian/auto accidents…people walk and look down at their blackberry or gaze up in the air while they laugh on their pretty little red phone, “ha, ha, ha…you’re kidding? I can’t believe he said that.”

This every-teenager-needs-a-cell-phone bit is a just another unnecessary consumer trend, and kids are the best consumers of all. The shinier the phone, the better. And who’s benefitting the most? The service providers and phone manufacturers. I can just see them rubbing their greedy little paws together. They’re laughing all the way to the bank, seeing how much Boomer and Generation X’er parents are spending on their kids’ text messages.

On the CBC news website poll accompanying this story, 77 percent (972 out of 1264) of voters voted ‘yes’ to support jamming cell phones in school. And out of 617 story comments (which I did not fully scan) the few responses I read seemed split along age lines. Younger respondents were all against the ban, saying , “I know my rights and I have a lawyer…you can’t take my cell phone, you Commie , Nazi fascist.” Older responders seemed to like the ban idea, and said stuff like, “…deal, you little snots, with your false sense of entitlements, and your bullsh*t backtalk…”

And then there are those hovering in between, (presumably in their early 20’s) saying stuff like, “come, come, when are we going to learn that bans never work? We should be teaching teenagers phone etiquette, instead.”

Phone etiquette?

Kids may indeed need to learn phone etiquette, but first they need to respect authority and shut the phone off if there’s a ban at school. Didn’t American founding father and inventor Benjamin Franklin say, “He that cannot obey, cannot command?”

So, someone has calculated that being a stay-at-home parent is worth roughly $160,000 dollars per year? Well, that’s great! After 13 years at home raising my three children, I guess somebody owes me just over two million dollars. Who is it? My husband? He doesn’t have it. Trust me, I know. The government…? I’m sure the taxpayers can’t wait to cough that up.

This trend of affixing dollar values to homemaking actually makes me feel a little patronised, as if somebody is patting me on the head. Staying at home involves looking after the chores that exist whether you work outside the home or not! More than a decade ago, I traded a salary and office clothes for baking bread and building castles out of wood blocks with preschoolers, but life just seemed to hum along more smoothly that way, for everybody involved.

How can you put a price on the luxury of your mom or dad sending you off to school in the morning with your lunch and a peck on the forehead and still being there to greet you when you get home with a plate of cookies? My mom did it for me, and you can’t buy memories like that…or comfort…or the sense of security that comes with it.

I admit that I feel very unsuccessful among my peers. Thirteen years is a long time to be out of the job market. It’s difficult to break in again, as I have been trying to do lately. I am faced with the necessity of reinventing myself. How many women have said to me, “Oh, it’s so great that you stay home with your kids…I could never do that, but good for you!” Was that a compliment…? I’m not sure.

The fact is, keeping the home fires burning is a thankless job, full of necessary, repetitive tasks, plain and simple. We only notice the waitress at our restaurant table when she doesn’t show up, when she’s late, when she makes a mistake. While she’s doing her job, we take her for granted. (If you’re a polite guest, you’ll thank her when you leave.)

Stay-at-home parents must be prepared for the personal and financial sacrifice. While your friends are going on vacations to Florida and Cuba, you’re going camping at Fundy. The two-income childless couple down the street drives an SUV and just renovated their home, while you drive a ten-year-old minivan and hope that your leaky bathtub doesn’t come crashing into the kitchen below until you save enough money to fix it!

So why did I give up a career in public relations for a solitary existence of dirty dishes and laundry? Because my kids were only going to be young once, and I didn’t want to miss a minute. I wanted to greet them at the door with a plate of cookies, like my mom did for me. Nobody pays you to do that…you pay for the privilege of doing it.

August 21, 2006 Calgary Sun: “Praying aloud gets a man jailed;” A Christian is arrested for obstruction after a complaint was made regarding his quiet observation of an outdoor occult festival. April, 2005: Teacher is suspended after a social commentary on homosexuality is published in local paper; 2001: Ontario Human Rights Commission penalizes printer $5,000 for refusing to print letterhead for a homosexual advocacy group on religious grounds;” February 28, 2005, the Western Standard: Canadian Revenue Agency threatens to withdraw a church’s tax exemption because the minister was critical of the Liberal government’s social policy.

Okay, so do you shrug and think, “Who cares? They probably had it coming.” If you do, shame on you. Today’s irritation with religious zeal will become tomorrow’s state control of virtually everything.

It’s trendy in our post-modern society to dislike and label Christians—if you’re a Christian, you’re a George Bush-Stephen Harper (same thing)-loving, Iraq-fighting, oil-burning, globe-warming, homophobic bigot. Christianity is erroneously seen as a white-man’s religion, a throwback to greedy European colonialism. Moreover, the media tends to categorize religious people under terms like ‘moderate,’ ‘fundamentalist,’ ‘evangelical,’ or ‘funda-gelical.’ Such labels insinuate the following: “Moderates are reasonable, and ‘fundamentalists’ are dangerous.” Seeing that I subscribe to the ‘fundamentals’ of Christianity, I could be considered a “fundamentalist” as defined by the media. Yet, I wince, because in the minds of listeners, the term lumps me with those that fly planes into buildings.

Society is so motivated to pursue individual rights, moral relativism, and to guard against anyone being offended, that it is willing to throw away the overarching freedoms that protect us all by vilifying people that don’t agree. Our problem lies with the definition of the words ‘intolerance,’ and ‘hatred.’ Lately, any public mention of the word ‘homosexuality’ and ‘sin’ in the same sentence is liable to put you in front of the Human Rights Commission for inciting hatred. Sweden, Australia, Britain…Canada. The right to preach unpopular views publicly in these countries is being tested. People do not want to hear, “Repent, or you too will perish,” outside the walls of a church. Not anymore.

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms is supposed to guarantee freedom of expression and freedom of worship for every citizen, and states we are “under God.” Yet, in Canada, we criticize Stephen Harper for saying, “God bless Canada” at the end of a speech. Why? Because he’s considered a Christian, and Christians have “a hidden agenda.” What is that hidden agenda, exactly?

Since democracy is defined as government by the people, especially rule of the majority, it is only as good as the people who exercise that political authority. I recognize that societal paradigm-shifts make big changes in social policy. But I lament that these present changes make Christianity “scary.” I never thought that my faith might someday put me in a Canadian jail as it does in other countries, but someday, it just might. And I’m afraid that you won’t care.

These headlines serve as a warning for all people who love freedom and democracy in our nation. Societal trends, which seek to protect citizens from religion will actually attempt to destroy religion, at least religion that isn’t sanctioned and regulated by the state.